Experiencing dramatically intense emotions can decrease your quality of life. Externalizing intense emotions in disruptive behaviors or keeping them tightly bottled inside are two very common, ineffective techniques of emotional regulation. Learning better, more effective emotional regulation may really help you live a better life. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a protocol of therapy that is administered over four to six individual sessions. It consists of a discovery of the subconscious beliefs that power behavior, their acknowledgment, and a conscious and intentional effort to replace these dysfunctional beliefs with others that promote effective emotional regulation. There are specific tools and techniques that make this through replacement possible, and Dr. Z will act as a coach to teach you and monitor your progress in learning and applying these new tools. The success rate of CBT is very high, and it is significantly better than taking prescription medication alone or self-medicating with alcohol or other substances.

What Is Emotional Regulation?

Emotional regulation is perhaps the most dramatically visible and the prototypical feature of an individual’s personality. Many people appear to be mostly in command of their emotions at critical moments, while others appear to be particularly (and sometimes explosively) reactive to environmental and interpersonal challenges. In general, affective or emotional instability, inordinate bursts of anger, intense efforts to avoid real or perceived abandonment, and unstable interpersonal relationships point to an underlying attribute of emotional dysregulation. This set of features has been popularized as belonging to “drama queens,” or persons who tend to react to every situation in an overly dramatic or exaggerated manner.

Sometimes, instances of emotional dysregulation in children (“acting out” behaviors) or in adults under the most severe stressors can be viewed as the only available response in circumstances in which overwhelmingly strong emotion must be expressed, such as in the context of an emotionally abusive family environment or in times of great personal upheaval.

A large body of research suggests that alcohol use can increase underlying emotional disturbance and disrupt cognitive functions that are very important in emotional self-regulation. Support for this hypothesis comes from studies that find associations between alcohol use and short- and long-term emotional change. In the short term, alcohol can disrupt emotional stability by effectively removing barriers against violence, verbal abuse, and inappropriate behaviors. In the long term, alcohol dependence and addiction can create a false persona in which it becomes difficult if not impossible to distinguish between the individual’s genuine personality traits and those modified or instigated by alcohol use.

Emotional disorders, particularly when they are characterized by pervasive emotional dysregulation, are often characterized by high negative emotionalism and low positive emotionalism. A significant challenge in trying to down-regulate negative emotions is to become less vulnerable to negative or distressing emotions, with the objective of increasing calmness and resilience in stressful situations.

Biological change is achieved by reducing individual reactivity to emotional stimuli. Even when this reactivity may be due to genetic dispositions (temperament) and early developmental experiences (nurture), most people can learn ways to better control their emotional expression. There is a combination of skills and interventions that is particularly helpful in promoting biological homeostasis and emotional stability. These include treating any underlying physical illness that may have a negative effect on mood, balancing nutrition and eating to replenish and maintain physical resources, staying off non-prescribed mood-altering substances, getting sufficient but not excessive sleep, and getting adequate physical exercise.

Contextual change refers to learning and practicing emotional resiliency, which is the ability to minimize negative effects of stressful events and situations, and to maximize the positive effects of positive outcomes and opportunities. The skill of resiliency is learned and reinforced by intentionally accumulating positive life events, i.e., making a conscious and deliberate catalog of what’s positive in one’s life and referring to it often until it is present and readily available in time of need. It also consists of developing practical skills that build a sense of generalized mastery and promote self-esteem, e.g., completing school, obtaining additional job training, taking an assertiveness course, and the like.

Get Help With Emotional Regulation

To make an appointment with Dr. Z, call (678) 554-5632 or fill out the online appointment request. We can go over your current situation, identify the ways in which emotional dys-regulation is affecting your life and that of your loved ones. We will put some dimensions to the problem, and identify your current resources that may be applied toward meaningful and lasting change. If additional resources and skills are needed, we will teach you how to regulate your emotions and choose the most appropriate response to each situation. Learning this is feasible, it's not rocket science, and has been learned by many other people who had a variety of different symptoms and challenges. Call and make your appointment today and we can get started!

What Causes (And Cures) Emotional Dys-regulation

The amygdala has been implicated in emotional dysregulation, aggressive behavior, and psychiatric illnesses such as depression. Anxiety disorders and dysregulation may be the result of too much activity in the amygdala and not enough activity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is the executive center of the brain that sets boundaries of behavior and responds to criteria of calm, assertiveness, and emotional regulation.

Stress, coupled with a genetic vulnerability, decreases the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is a protein that acts on the nervous system by helping the survival of existing neurons and promoting the growth and differentiation of new neurons and synapses. A reduction in BDNF production causes a thinning of neuronal structures, which can results in emotional disturbance. These structural changes make the prefrontal limbic governing system vulnerable to disruption and dysregulation. Thus, emotional stress, loss, or other significant psychological factors cause the system to lose self-regulation.

Treatments such as antidepressant medications, lithium, electroconvulsive therapy, exercise, psychotherapy and good social support can reverse this process, increase the production of BDNF, renew neuronal growth, build more resilient self-regulating circuits, and return the individual to a healthy mood.

Disorders of Emotional Dysregulation

Attachment style issues, which may create an insecure or fearful attachment by one partner to another. In adult relationships, a fearful or insecure attachment style may cause significant emotional turmoil characterized by angry demands for attention, unbridled or paranoid jealousy, or the starting of trivial arguments as a way of connecting with the other even if only in a negative way. This behavior usually provokes a reaction of defense and withdrawal in the other partner, which in turns triggers and heightens additional pursuit behavior by the insecurely attached partner. In time, these cycles of angry pursuit and defensive withdrawal become almost infallible predictors of separation and divorce.

PTSD, or posttraumatic stress disorder, is characterized by very significant emotional dysregulation. Its sufferers experience unwarranted arousal—often caused by stimuli processedoutside of conscious awareness—and exhibit an exaggerated startle response, vivid intrusive thoughts, and flashbacks and nightmares related to past traumatic events. PTSD victims may frantically try to avoid physical or psychological reminders of their trauma, and may experience dissociative symptoms or emotional numbing. PTSD is a disorder of emotional dysregulation characterized by excessive fear, triggered by a severe and often life-threatening traumatic event.

Frontal lobe disorders, which have become rather common among combat survivors, are the product of traumatic brain injury and are characterized by emotional dysregulation, attention deficit, impulsivity, lack of inhibition, poor insight, impaired judgment, and low motivation. These frontal-subcortical disorders can result not only from war zone trauma, but also from infection, cancer, stroke, and neurodegenerative disease. Explosive violence, often directed at family members, is a common occurrence, particularly in individuals in whom impulsivity, disinhibition, and emotional dysregulation are the most dominant features.

Finally, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by emotional as well as cognitive dysregulation, brought on by a disruption of both the “thinking” prefrontal and the “feeling” paralimbic networks.

In these and other disorders that feature emotional dysregulation, it is interesting to note that the anatomic structures that are affected have emotional as well as cognitive functions. This coincidence highlights once again the close interdependence of affective and cognitive operations in the human brain. We can’t feel deeply without thinking intensely, and vice versa.